For some families, bin Laden's demise is deeply personal

Shanna SissomMidland Reporter-Telegram

Published 2:02 pm, Monday, May 2, 2011

It was one of those moments in time most of us will never forget: hearing the news U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden. Crowds formed outside the White House and at ground zero as people cheered late Sunday night and celebrated into the early morning hours of Monday.

It was interesting to watch people spontaneously gather, reacting to the world's most wanted man finally getting justice.

For reasons I haven't figured out, the news and events unfolding on the 24-hour news networks late Sunday felt personal. It was something I wished my father had lived to see. Bin Laden was killed on what would have been Dad's 72nd birthday.

My mother, weary from recent travels, was sound asleep and didn't hear the phone ring late Sunday. It seemed proper to talk to a close family member, so I called my grandmother. She had awakened me on the morning another evil man, Saddam Hussein, was captured.

And this particular 90-year-old lady doesn't like to miss major news events, no matter the hour. Sure enough, she was grateful for the phone call as she excitedly got up to turn on her TV.

No doubt all of us reflected on the September morning nearly a decade ago when thousands of innocent Americans were murdered and the massive hunt for bin Laden began. At last count Monday morning, 6,014 troops had lost their lives fighting the war on terror. Eighteen of those were from the Permian Basin.

As was reported in this newspaper on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, we know at least some of these young men from our area chose to enlist as a direct result of those attacks.

Among them was then-18-year-old Chad Bales, who was driving a tractor while listening to the radio on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. He knew then he wanted to fight the terrorists responsible for the attack.

"He heard about the airplanes flying into the World Trade Center and that made him want to go immediately," his stepfather, John Metcalf of Cahoma, said in 2006. "We all had our personal thoughts and I just knew Chad was changed then."

This young man got off his tractor and went on to become a Marine before being killed during convoy operations in Iraq.

Another young man, then high school senior Clayton Henson of Midland and Stanton, was similarly motivated.

"If I don't do it, who will?" he remarked to his father before enlisting. Henson, too, was killed at the age of 20 in Iraq.

The first Midland County soldier to be killed in Iraq was Robert Arsiaga, 25, who just before leaving for war wrote a poem to his mother, describing his convictions.

"Freedom is on the line and the stakes are high," he wrote. "And I'm willing to go all in, even if I die."

Again, I wonder why our military's bringing such an evil man to justice feels "personal" to me. I neither lost a loved one on 9/11 nor personally knew a soldier killed.